SHE may look cute, but Smooch is a ferocious little devil. Born amid the ashes of Black Saturday, her existence is a small but significant victory in the desperate fight to save the Tasmanian devil.
The feisty six-month-old is one of 28 disease-free joeys born in Healesville Sanctuary's new devil breeding centre in the aftermath of February's bushfires.
Amazingly, all nine of the centre's wild-caught females became pregnant soon after being evacuated to Melbourne Zoo as embers rained down.
''We were very concerned that evacuating them would disrupt the breeding cycle because it's extremely stressful and traditionally devils have a really low breeding success rate,'' senior keeper Tiffany Eastley said.
''But they didn't seem to mind at all. Usually they have only a 30 per cent reproduction rate in captivity, so to have a 100 per cent reproduction rate is amazing..."
I can't be the only one getting Midwich Cuckoo vibes. They're telepathic-psycho-kinetic-hivemind furballs, and they will be the ruin of us all.
Hang ON!
ReplyDeleteWhen did these suckers stop being extinct?
when aliens started impregnating them with telepathic hiveminds!
ReplyDelete... Oh.
ReplyDeleteSounds like some god somewhere has sympathy for the devils. Hope we'll get the same intervention if a disease like that hits the human race D: (Though it would certainly solve the world's population problem....)
ReplyDeletethere are already a great many diseases hitting up the human race. i'm inclined to think we don't require intervention. or we need a much more effective disease first. the pig sick failed in that regard.
ReplyDelete